The Bourne Supremacy jb-2

by Robert Ludlum

  Mao's tomb. Special guns for special people, another recognition factor, the armaments consistent. Instead of one shell, he now had the full complement of nine in addition to a silencer that precluded disturbing the revered dead in a revered mausoleum. The second was a wallet that contained money and an official document proclaiming the bearer to be a member of the People's Security Forces. The conspirators had colleagues in high places. Bourne rolled the corpse under the limousine, slashed the left tyres and raced around the car, plunging his hunting knife into those on the right. The huge automobile settled into the ground. The captain from the Kuomintang was provided with a secure, concealed resting place.

  Jason ran to the gatehouse, debating whether or not to shoot out the floodlights and decided against it. If he survived he would need the illumination of the landmark. If! he had to survive! Marie! He went inside, kneeling below the window, and removed the shells from the guard's automatic, inserting them into his own. He then looked around for schedules or instructions; there was a roster tacked to the wall next to the ring of keys hanging on a nail. He grabbed the keys.

  A telephone rang! The ear-splitting bell reverberated off the glass walls of the small gatehouse. If there's a telephone check, I know the routine. A captain from the Kuomintang. Bourne rose, picked up the phone from the counter and crouched again, spreading his fingers over the mouthpiece.

  'Jing Shan," he said hoarsely. 'Yes?'

  'Hello, my thrusting butterfly,' answered a female voice in what Jason could hear was decidedly uncultured Mandarin. 'How are all your birds tonight?'

  'They're fine but I'm not. '

  'You don't sound like yourself. This is Wo, isn't it?'

  'With a terrible cold and vomiting and running back to the toilets every two minutes. Nothing stays down or inside. '

  'Will you be all right in the morning? I don't wish to be contaminated. '

  Take out the lonely ones, the ugly ones.. . 'I wouldn't want to miss our date-'

  'You'll be too weak. I'll call you tomorrow night. '

  'My heart withers like the dying flower. '

  'Cow dung!' The woman hung up.

  As he talked, Jason's eyes strayed to a pile of heavy coiled chain in the corner of the gatehouse; and he understood. In China, where so many mechanical things failed, the chain was a back-up should the lock in the centre of the gate refuse to close. On top of the coiled chain was an ordinary steel padlock. One of the keys on the ring should fit it, he thought as he inserted several until the lock sprang open. He gathered up the chain and started outside, then stopped, turned around and ripped the telephone out of the wall. One more piece of malfunctioning equipment.

  At the gate, he uncoiled the chain and wound the entire length around the mid-point of the two centre posts until there was a bulging mass of coiled steel. He pressed four links of the chain together so that the open spaces were clear, inserted the curved bar and secured the lock. Everything was stretched taut and contrary to generally accepted belief, firing a bullet into the mass of hard metal would not blow it apart, only heighten the possibility that a deflected bullet might kill the one firing and endanger the lives of anyone else in the area. He turned and started down the centre path, once more staying in the shadows of the border.

  The path was dark. The glow from the floodlit gate was blocked by the dense woods of the bird sanctuary, the light, however, still visible in the sky. Cupping his penlight in the palm of his left hand, his arm stretched downwards towards the ground, he could see every six or seven feet a small piece of gravel. Once he saw the first two or three he knew what to look for: tiny discolorations on the dark earth, the distance relatively consistent between each. D'Anjou had squeezed up each stone, probably between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing it as hard as he could to remove the grime of the parking lot and impart the oils of his flesh so that each might stand out. The battered Echo had not lost his presence of mind.

  Suddenly, there were two stones, not one, and only inches apart. Jason looked up, squinting in the tiny glow of the concealed penlight. The two stones were no accident but another signal. The main path continued straight ahead, but the one taken by the herded prisoners veered sharply to the right. Two stones meant a turn.

  Then, abruptly, there was a change in the relative distances between the pebbles. They were farther and farther apart, and just when Bourne thought there were no more, he saw another. Suddenly, there were two on the ground, marking another intersecting path. D'Anjou knew he was running out of stones and so had begun a second strategy, a tactic that quickly became clear to Jason. As long as the prisoners remained on a single path, there would be no stones, but when they turned into other paths two pieces of gravel indicated the direction.

  He skirted the edges of marshes and went deep into fields and' out of them, everywhere hearing the sudden fluttering of wings and the screeches of disturbed birds as they winged off into the moonlit sky. Finally there was only one narrow path and it led down into a glen of sorts-

  He stopped, instantly extinguishing the cupped penlight. Below, about a hundred feet down the narrow path, he saw the glow of a cigarette. It moved slowly, casually, up and down, an unconcerned man smoking, but still a man placed where he was for a reason. Then Jason studied the darkness beyond – because it was a different darkness; specks of light flickered now and then through the dense woods of the descending glen. Torches, perhaps, for there was nothing constant about the barely discernible light. Of course, torches. He had reached it. Below in the distant glen, beyond the guard with his cigarette, was the meeting ground.

  Bourne lurched into the tangled brush on the right side of the path. He started down only to find that the serpentine reeds were like fish nets, stalks woven together by years of erratic winds. To rip them apart or to break them would create noise inconsistent with the normal sounds of the sanctuary. Snaps and zipper-like scratchings were not the sudden fluttering of wings or the screeches of disturbed inhabitants. They were man-made and signified a different intrusion. He reached for his knife, wishing the blade were longer, and began a journey that had he remained on the path would have taken him no more than thirty seconds. It took him now nearly twenty minutes to slice his way silently to within sight of the guard.

  'My God! Jason held his breath, suppressing the cry in his throat. He had slipped; the slithering, hissing creature beneath his left foot was at least a yard and a half in length. It coiled around his leg, and in panic he clutched a part of the body, pulling it away from his flesh and severing it in mid-air with his knife. The snake thrashed violently about for several seconds, then the spasms stopped; it was dead, uncoiled at his foot. He closed his eyes and shivered, letting the moment pass. Again he crouched and crept closer to the guard, who was now lighting another cigarette or trying to light it with one match after another that failed to ignite. The guard seemed furious with his government subsidized book of matches.

  'Ma de shizi, shizi?' he said under his breath, the cigarette in his mouth.

  Bourne crawled forward, slicing the last few reeds of thick grass until he was six feet from the man. He sheathed the hunting knife and again reached into his right back pocket for the garrotte. There could be no misplaced blade that permitted a scream; there could only be utter silence broken by an unheard expulsion of air.

  He's a human being! A son, a brother, a father!

  He is the enemy. He's our target. That's all we have to know. Marie is yours, not theirs.

  Jason Bourne lunged out of the grass as the guard inhaled his first draft of tobacco. The smoke exploded from his gaping mouth. The garrotte was arced in place, the trachea severed as the patrol fell back in the underbrush, his body limp, his life over.

  Whipping out the bloody wire, Jason shook it in the grass, then rolled the spools together and shoved them back into his pocket. He pulled the corpse deeper into the foliage, away from the path, and began searching the pockets. He first found what felt like a thick wad of folded toilet tissue, not at all uncommon in
China where such paper was continuously in short supply. He unsnapped his penlight, cupped it and looked at his find, astonished. The paper was folded and soft but it was not tissue. It was renminbi, thousands of yuan, more than several years' income for most Chinese. The guard at the gate, the 'captain of the Kuomintang', had money -somewhat more than Jason thought usual – but nowhere near this amount. A wallet was next. There were photographs of children, which Bourne quickly replaced, a driving permit, a housing allocation certificate and an official document proclaiming the bearer to be... a member of the People's Security Forces! Jason pulled out the paper he had taken from the first guard's wallet and placed both side by side on the ground. They were identical. He folded both and put them into his pocket. A last item was as puzzling as it was interesting. It was a pass allowing the bearer access to Friendship Stores, those shops that served foreign travellers and which were prohibited to the Chinese except for the highest government officials. Whoever the men were below, thought Bourne, they were a strange and rarefied group. Subordinate guards carried enormous sums of money, enjoyed official privileges light years beyond their positions, and bore documents identifying them as members of the government's secret police. If they were conspirators – and everything he had seen and heard from Shenzhen to Tian an men Square to this wildlife preserve would seem to confirm it – the conspiracy reached into the hierarchy of Beijing. No time! It's not your concern!

  The weapon strapped to the man's waist was, as he expected, similar to the one in his belt, as well as the gun he had thrown into the woods at the Jing Shan gate. It was a superior weapon, and weapons were symbols. A sophisticated weapon was no less a mark of status than an expensive watch, which might have many imitators, but those who had a schooled eye for the merchandise would know the genuine article. One might merely show it to confirm one's status, or deny it as government issue from an army that bought its weapons from every available source in the world. It was a subtle point of recognition; only one superior kind allocated to one elite circle. No time! It's no concern of yours! Move!

  Jason extracted the shells, put them in his pocket and threw the gun into the forest. He crawled out to the path and started slowly, silently, down towards the flickering light beyond the wall of high trees below.

  It was more than a glen, it was a huge well dug out of prehistoric earth, a rupture dating from the Ice Age that had not healed. Birds flapped above in fear and curiosity; owls hooted in angry dissonance. Bourne stood at the edge of the precipice looking down through the trees at the gathering below. A pulsating circle of torches illuminated the meeting ground. David Webb gasped, wanting to vomit, but the ice-cold command dictated otherwise.

  Stop it. Watch. Know what we're dealing with.

  Suspended from the limb of a tree by a rope attached to his bound wrists, his arms stretched out above him, his feet barely inches off the ground, a male prisoner writhed in panic, muted cries coming from his throat, his eyes wild and pleading above his gagged mouth.

  A slender, middle-aged man dressed in a Mao jacket and trousers stood in front of the violently twisting body. His right hand was extended, clasping the jewelled hilt of an upended sword, its blade long and thin, its point resting in the earth. David Webb recognized the weapon – weapon and not a weapon. It was a ceremonial sword of a fourteenth-century warlord, a ruthless class of militarists who destroyed villages and towns and whole countrysides even suspected of opposing the will of the Yuan emperors, Mongols who left nothing but fire and death and the screams of children in their wake. The sword was also used for ceremonies far less symbolic, far more brutal than appearances at the dynasty's courts. David felt a wave of nausea and apprehension gripping him as he watched the scene below.

  'Listen to me!' shouted the slender man in front of the prisoner as he turned to address his audience. His voice was highpitched but deliberate, instructive. Bourne did not know him, but his was a face that would be hard to forget. The close-cropped grey hair, the gaunt, pale features – above all, the stare. Jason could not see the eyes clearly but it was enough that the fires of the torches danced off them. They, too, were on fire. Behind him, silent, almost passive, stood the impostor. The man who looked like David – No, like

  Jason Bourne.

  'The nights of the great blade begin? the slender man screamed suddenly. 'And they will continue night after night until all those who would betray us are sent to helll Each of these poisonous insects has committed crimes against our holy cause, crimes we are aware of, all of which could lead to the great crime demanding the great blade. ' The speaker turned to the suspended prisoner. ' You! Indicate the truth and only the truth! Do you know the Occidental?'

  The prisoner shook his head, throated moans accompanying the wild movement.

  'Liar!' shrieked a voice from the crowd. 'He was in the Tian

  an men this afternoon!'

  Again the prisoner shook his head spastically in panic . 'He spoke against the true China!' shouted another. 'I heard him in the Hua gong Park among the young people!' 'And in the coffee house on the Xidan bei!' The prisoner moved convulsively, his wide, stunned eyes fixed in shock on the crowd. Bourne began to understand. The man was hearing lies and-he did not know why, but Jason knew. A Star Chamber inquisition was in session; a troublemaker, or a man with doubts, was being eliminated in the name of a greater crime, in the remote possibility that he might have committed it. The nights of the great blade begin -night after night! It was a reign of terror inside a small, bloody kingdom within a vast land where centuries of bloodstained warlords had prevailed.

  'He did these things?' shouted the gaunt-faced orator. 'He said these things?'

  A frenzied chorus of affirmatives filled the glen.

  'In the Tian an men...!'

  'He talked to the Occidental...!'

  'He betrayed us all...!'

  'He caused the trouble at the hated Mao's tomb...!'

  'He would see us dead, our cause lost...!'

  'He speaks against our leaders and wants them killed...!'

  'To oppose our leaders,' said the orator, his voice calm but rising, 'is to vilify them, and, by so doing, to remove the care one must accord the precious gift called life. When these things occur, the gift must be taken away. '

  The suspended man writhed more furiously, his cries growing louder and matching the moans of the other prisoners who were forced to kneel in front of the speaker in full view of the imminent execution. Only one kept refusing, continuously trying to rise in disobedience and disrespect, and continuously beaten down by the guard nearest him. It was Philippe d'Anjou. Echo was sending another message to Delta, but Jason Bourne could not understand it.

  '...this diseased, ungrateful hypocrite, this teacher of the young who was welcomed like a brother into our dedicated ranks because we believed the words he spoke – so courageously, we thought – in opposition to our motherland's tormentors, is no more than a traitor. His words are hollow. He is a sworn companion of the treacherous winds and they would take him to our enemies, the tormentors of Mother China! In his death may he find purification!' The now shrill-voiced orator pulled the sword out of the ground. He raised it above his head.

  And so that his seed may not be spread, recited the scholar David Webb to himself, recalling the words of the ancient incantation and wanting to close his eyes, but unable to, ordeted by his other self not to. We destroy the well from which the seed springs, praying to the spirits to destroy all it has entered here on earth.

  The sword arced vertically down, hacking into the groin and genitalia of the screaming, twisting body.

  And so that his thoughts may not be spread, diseasing the innocent and the weak, we pray to the spirits to destroy them wherever they may be, as we here destroy the well from which they spring.

  The writhing body fell to the ground under a shower of blood from the severed head, which the slender man with the eyes of fire continued to abuse with the blade until there was no remnant of a human face.

  T
he rest of the terrified prisoners filled the glen with wails of horror as they grovelled on the ground, soiling themselves, begging for mercy. Except one. D'Anjou rose to his feet and stared in silence at the messianic man with the sword. The guard approached. Hearing him, the Frenchman turned and spat in his face. The guard, mesmerized, perhaps sickened by what he had seen, backed away. What was Echo doing! What was his message!

  Bourne looked back to the executioner, the man with the gaunt face and close-cropped grey hair. He was wiping the long blade of the sword with a white silk scarf as aides removed the body and what was left of the prisoner's skull. He pointed to a striking, attractive woman who was being dragged by the two guards over to the rope. Her posture was erect, defiant. Delta studied his face. Beneath the maniacal eyes, the man's thin mouth was stretched into a slit. He was smiling.

  He was dead. Some time. Somewhere. Perhaps tonight. A butcher, a bloodstained, blind fanatic who would plunge the Far East into an unthinkable war – China against China, the rest of the world to follow.

  Tonight!

  27

  This woman is a courier, one of those to whom we gave our trust,' the orator went on, gradually raising his voice like a fundamentalist minister, preaching the gospel of love while his eye is on the work of the devil. The trust was not earned but given in faith, for she is the wife of one of our own, a brave soldier, a first son of an illustrious family of the true China. A man who as I speak now risks his life by infiltrating our enemies in the south. He, too, gave her his trust... and she betrayed that trust, she betrayed that gallant husband, she betrayed us all! She is no more than a whore who sleeps with the enemy! And while her lust is satiated how many secrets has she revealed, how much deeper is her betrayal? Is she the Occidental's contact here in Beijing? Is she the one who informs on us, who tells our enemies what to look for, what to expect? How else could this terrible day have happened? Our most experienced, dedicated men set a trap for our enemies that would have cut them down, ridding ourselves of Western criminals who see only riches to be won by grovelling in front of China's tormentors. It is related that she was at the airport this morning. The airport! Where the trap was in progress! Did she give her wanton body to a dedicated man, drugging him, perhaps? Did her lover tell her what to do, what to say to our enemies! What has this harlot done?